OpenDOAR

Repository technical support

Enables repository managers to access technical resources for their repository, including interoperability guidelines and associated software. Read more

ORCID technical support

Offering reduced ORCID membership costs and UK-based technical and community support. Read more

Investigating Open Access Monograph Services (R&D: Research project)

Exploring services that could support and encourage UK universities with the publication of Open Access (OA) peer-reviewed monographs. Read more

How our open access services support the publication lifecycle

Phase: Submission

Assessing which journal to submit a paper to, with reference to the OA policies of both relevant research funders and the journals themselves.

Task: Select Journal

Information on publishers’ journal OA policies as well as those of funders is essential when selecting which journal to publish in.

SHERPA RoMEO

Enables researchers and librarians to see publishers’ conditions for open access publication on a journal-by-journal basis. Read more

Relates to: Journal OA policies.

Task: Check compliance

Checking whether a selected journal’s OA policy complies with a funder's requirements for OA and/or whether it supports eligibility to submit to the REF, is essential when selecting which journal to publish in.

SHERPA JULIET

Enables researchers and librarians to see funders’ conditions for open access publication. Read more

SHERPA FACT

Checks if compliance with funder open access policies can be achieved with a particular journal. Read more

Relates to: The connection: Compliances with RCUK, Wellcome and other funder OA policies.

SHERPA REF (R&Aamp;D Service in development - Alpha

Checks if a particular journal allows them to comply with the REF policy, and offers advice based on its findings. Read more

Relates to: Eligibility to submit to REF.

Phase: Acceptance

The decision by a journal to publish a paper, relevant to both the Research Excellence Framework OA policy, and potentially the payment of an OA fee.

OpenDOAR

Publications Router

Helps institutions ensure that their own research articles are captured on their systems. Read more

Relates to: Notifications from publishers and others.

Phase: Publication

Formal release of the published version of the paper in the journal, enabling it to be discovered and accessed via the publisher’s platform if Gold OA. Also the date from which embargo periods are calculated for Green OA.

Task: Report on compliance

Reliable and comprehensive management information about OA articles gives librarians and research managers the opportunity to monitor and prove compliance with funders’ OA policies and manage expenditure.

Monitor Local

Enables institutions to record and report on data relating to the publication of open access outputs by their academics, including both ‘gold’ and ‘green’ publication routes. Read more

Relates to: Collect and manage administrative data about OA.

Publications Router

Helps institutions ensure that their own research articles are captured on their systems. Read more

Relates to: Notifications from publishers and others.

Task: Maximise impact

Supporting the dissemination of researchers’ OA articles is an important way for institutions to extend the visibility, reach and overall value their institution’s research globally.

CORE

Enables users to discover, access and use OA content from repositories and journals worldwide. Read more

Relates to: Global OA platform harvesting from repositories.

Phase: Use

Discovery, access and use, including the use of text-mining tools. Downloads are events that can be aggregated and monitored, to inform researchers and managers.

Task: Record impact

To be able to evidence the value/ impact of its OA research, an institution needs to collect data and receive customised reports that outline the usage of its articles from repositories.

IRUS-UK

Enables benchmarking by institutions, by providing usage reports from their and other repositories. Read more

Relates to: Collects data and reports on usage from repositories.

Task: Report impact to funders

To be able to report compliance to funders e ectively, information needs to be structured in agreed and consistent ways.

RIOXX

Metadata profile allowing institutional repositories to share information about open access research papers and their compliance with funder policies. Read more

Select journal

Enables researchers and librarians to see publishers’ conditions for open access publication on a journal-by-journal basis.

Relates to: Journal OA policies

Check compliance

Checking whether a selected journal’s OA policy complies with a funder's requirements for OA and/or whether it supports eligibility to submit to the REF, is essential when selecting which journal to publish in.

Helps institutions ensure that their own research articles are captured on their systems.

Relates to: Notifications from publishers and others.

Publication

Formal release of the published version of the paper in the journal, enabling it to be discovered and accessed via the publisher’s platform if Gold OA. The date from which embargo periods is also calculated.

Report on compliance

Reliable and comprehensive management information about OA articles gives librarians and research managers the opportunity to monitor and prove compliance with funders’ OA policies and manage expenditure.

Guidance, consultancy, technical support, and OA good practice

Our offer

By using our open access (OA) services, information professionals and researchers save time and money and achieve greater reach for their research.

Our services provide user-friendly and cost-effective ways to automate workflows, assess compliance, share good practice, carry out benchmarking and influence third parties such as publishers and funders.

Acting for and with the higher education sector, we are easing the move to open access.

Policy and engagement

Our work is developed in line with UK government, funding councils and research funders' policies.

We have engaged with open access policy for many years, both in the UK and more widely. Our work continues, in order to ensure that the OA policy environment offers the maximum benefit with minimum burden for institutions and researchers.

Our current work in OA policy

While we support the aims of OA, we do not have a policy position on how this is achieved. Rather, our policy work is informed by the evidence of benefit and burden to UK research, and the wider economy and society.

There are many groups in the UK and internationally whose remit includes OA, and Jisc is active in many of them. This graphic (pdf) shows many of the groups, and might be a helpful resource for those navigating this landscape.

UK policy

The Universities-UK Open Access Coordinating Group is the main body which the UK government looks to in relation to OA. It brings together publishers, learned societies, universities, libraries, research managers, funders and others.

We play an active role in this group. One example was helping to shape and oversee the production of its 2015 report on monitoring the transition to open access. Further such reports are anticipated. Another example is our participation in all four of the subgroups focusing on efficiencies, journal service standards, repositories and monographs, including acting as secretariat for the efficiencies group.

Another network in which we are active is the Open Scholarship Initiative, which aims to be a global, inclusive effort to improve the future of how research information gets published, shared and accessed.

EC project involvement

Another network is the policy “knowledge net” that emerged from the EC-funded project PASTEUR4OA, in which we were a major partner. That has now merged with the OpenAIRENational OA Desk (NOAD) network; Jisc is the UK NOAD, and is a partner in the OpenAIRE project.

Policy expression

While we inform policies themselves we can also see that, in some cases, total alignment of policies will not be possible. Having those differences expressed clearly becomes very important for those trying to implement them. We have worked with SHERPA/Juliet, the Registry of Open Access Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) and others to develop a schema for funders’ and institutions’ OA policies, which we are now promoting.

Publishers have policies too, for example associated with the journals they publish. These are documented in our SHERPA/RoMEO service, but we are also working directly with publishers, alongside funders, libraries and others, to see whether the expression of those policies can be made clearer.

Our previous work in OA policy

Early work

Open access has been around for a long time, and we have been helping universities exploit its potential for nearly as long.

Notably, with international partners, we supported a petition to the EC in 2007 that was highly influential in its subsequent moves toward OA.

Evidence to support policy development

While some, such as the Wellcome Trust and individual research councils, had adopted OA policies by this time, a series of reports on the economic costs and benefits of OA helped to bring the topic to the attention of more policy makers.

The culmination of this work in 2012 was another analytical report, again with the Research Information Network and others, called Heading for the Open Road. This laid the basis for the UK government to establish a working group under Dame Janet Finch, whose 2013 report stands as the basis for UK OA policy.

Negotiations to offset the cost of hybrid journals

Jisc Collections has reached agreements with a range of publishers including Wiley, Taylor and Francis, IOPP, SAGE Publishing and Springer to develop offset models to alleviate the cost faced by higher education institutions in maintaining subscriptions to hybrid journals while also paying article processing charges (APCs) for open access (OA) publication.

A number of different offsetting approaches are being tested or are in use. This limits the total cost paid by individual institutions, for both APCs and subscriptions/licence fees. One model flips the traditional approach so that the fee paid relates to UK authored published articles, with a smaller fee providing access to other content. Another proportionally reduces the subscription prices as UK OA publishing increases. Other models provide discounts, credits or tokens related to expenditure.

The overall aim is to limit and constrain the negative financial impact on institutions of licensing journal content and paying APCs for OA articles published in those same journals.

Based on its experience so far, Jisc Collections has issued a set of principles for offset schemes.

Data gathering in support of offsetting negotiations

Jisc Collections is continually collecting evidence of the effectiveness and administrative implications of these offset agreements and amends its negotiation objectives in response to that evidence.

It collects data on individual APC transactions from UK universities, with 20-30 reporting at present using a standard template agreed with the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) and the research councils, and this data provides hard evidence on the state of the UK APC market.

Contact us

Helen’s role is to provide specialist advice in the area of scholarly communications, including open access.

As our subject specialist, she is happy to talk to you about any aspect of Jisc’s open access support and providing tailored advice and guidance on which services and support will meet your needs, drawing in expertise from across Jisc’s OA team.